The Times Discovers Real D.c.

In Petworth, Columbia Heights, the U Street district and even the
dicier parts of North Capitol Hill, a little restaurant revival is
under way. Washington neighborhoods that for years were considered too
dangerous or too poor for a viable sit-down restaurant are suddenly
entertaining quite a few. ... “For the past two or three years, you kind of feel this energy, this
current, going through D.C.,” said Neil Glick, who for eight years has
served as the advisory neighborhood commissioner for Capitol Hill East.
“It’s really kind of a hip place to be. Suburbia is dead.”

A short drive north is Petworth, where [chef Gillian] Clark has lived for a decade. At
the neighborhood’s main intersection, the smell of grilling jerk
chicken from Sweet Mango drifted over to the construction site that
will be home to her Georgia Avenue Meeting House, a 4,000-square-foot
restaurant she hopes to have open by late fall. Condos are being built
on the top floors of the development, which will also house a new Metro
entrance.

Neighbors, who have watched the open-air drug and
prostitute markets go away and home values rise, are looking forward to
the development, said Dan Silverman, who writes a blog called the
Prince of Petworth. “For sure people are excited because for many years
in this neighborhood and Columbia Heights there were not options except
take-out Chinese,” he said.

Petworth is a fascinating area. I have driven through it every single Sunday morning for three years. At 9:15 a.m. on Sundays, Sweet Mango -- the jerk chicken place -- is already belching delicious-smelling smoke onto the corner, and by noon, when people are flooding out of church, El Limeno and Domku are ready to dish out garlic shrimp and beet salad. But the restaurants -- and, actually, the church I work at, too -- attract mostly outsiders, rather than locals. It's still a neighborhood for urban vacations.